


Once There Were Two Soldiers

by You_Light_The_Sky



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Bucky Barnes Feels, Gen, Hurt Steve Rogers, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Issues, M/M, PTSD, vague violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-22
Updated: 2014-05-22
Packaged: 2018-01-26 02:10:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1670846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/You_Light_The_Sky/pseuds/You_Light_The_Sky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s easy to see which stories are true. Barnes is a fairy tale. Clearly he’s the monster and the ghost. He’s been no one all along.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once There Were Two Soldiers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chupilca](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chupilca/gifts).



> For chupilcaconharina on tumblr. The unedited and and original version is posted [here](http://youlighttheskyfanfiction.tumblr.com/post/86417855716/7-afraid-steve-bucky). I ended up liking this drabble more than I thought I would and it's a bit lengthy for a drabble so I decided to share it on here as well. Hope you enjoy.

**Part 1**

**Can you tell me about Bucky Barnes?**

James Buchanan Barnes is called a hero of the people, the one Howling Commando who gave his life up for the cause. Captain America’s right hand man. Inseparable in the battlefield and at home. A first rate sniper. A joker. He has a smile that can charm women, from what the soldier sees of the newsreels, and a rare charisma. Probably a charmer. Constantly touching Captain America on the shoulders as if he belongs there, punching him in the shoulder and pulling him in for one-armed hugs and the smiles that Captain America gives in return…

For some reason, he wants to punch Barnes until he can’t see his face anymore. Until there is no Barnes left. Until there is only Captain America (and those sad blues, peering into him, what do they see?) But what then—?

He walks into the bathroom. Stares at himself. Bagged eyes. Oily long hair. Haggard features and a few more wrinkles here and there. The glance of a killer. Yet this is _Barnes’s_ face and Barnes is the one that the Captain was talking to. Barnes is the one that the Captain will do anything to get back.

_I’m with you till the end of the line._

He punches the mirror and watches the glass particles gather in between the creases of his metal arm.

-

He can’t stop hunting for stories of Barnes. He steals books from the libraries, goes over the references to Barnes’s kills and part in different missions. He memorizes the date that Barnes was rescued, memorizes his draft paper numbers and his serial number. Presses the date of his death against his palm. Reads through, and later watches, interviews with the surviving Commandoes over the years, looks at their grieving body language when they discuss what Barnes and the Captain were like on the battlefield.

“Like brothers,” Jones says. “Always laughing over a private joke between the two of them. Barnes liked to hover over Rogers like he was still a small thing but Rogers never minded. He kept a watchful eye over Barnes in turn… like he might disappear.”

“A bunch of devils,” Morita laughs in remembrance. “Once they put their heads together, no one could escape them.”

“Close,” says Falswarth. “Really close.” And that’s all he’ll offer with a sad bow of his head.

But the soldier wants details. More. When did the Captain and Barnes meet. How did Barnes inspire such loyalty and devotion in the Captain? How does Barnes make him _smile_ like that, like Barnes is something precious, like Barnes is more than just a war hero? How does Barnes act in public? What jokes did he share with the Captain? Did he have nightmares? Did he feel nothing when he killed for Captain America? Did he despise him when he fell?

These are just painted stories. A glorified image of a man as a perfect best friend. Nothing of these tales are in the soldier now and he’s not sure why he feels this… this disturbing ache in his chest.

-

Reading about Barnes proves to be a fruitless and pointless search. He’s no closer to understanding what the bond between Barnes and the Captain is, no closer to understanding _why_ he fished the Captain out of the ocean only that there was something in him that grasped for something to be _his_ and the Captain _knew him_ and offered to be _his_ and so he must survive. For now. Until the soldier has more that is his and he knows what to do with his mission.

If searching for Barnes is a pointless exercise then he’ll look for something else. Stories about himself. The soldier. His past missions. Then he can form a better estimate of who, of what, he is.

-

Stories about himself are scarce. They call him a ghost. He doesn’t exist, they claim. There are hundreds of kills credited to him that he’s confirmed are only rumours. Human beings can be stupid when they fear something they can’t see or name. But the kills that are his are always completed. Quick shots to the heart if possible. But he has no care for civilians or government property if he has to get a job done. Just a list of dead names and he can sort out details of how he would have approached the kill, he can guess and put together a bloody picture of what he did as the soldier.

Horror stories, they’d call them. He doesn’t even know who ‘they’ are but the first face he pictures is the Captain’s and for some reason he feels… he feels this itch in his throat and eyes. He ends up throwing the files angrily against the wall and breaking apart several of the chairs in the motel room.

It’s easy to see which stories are true. Barnes is a fairy tale. Clearly he’s the monster and the ghost. He’s been no one all along.

-

If he’s just a killer than he embraces it. That is his mission. Kill targets that interfere with… _with the mission,_ a voice supplies in his head. Until he can complete that mission himself.

The soldier brings up a list of all potential threats of Captain America, of HYDRA enemies that have survived and may hold a grudge (a traceless poison ends up in Rumlow’s IV, the HYDRA enemies trailing the Captain and Wilson are shot and dumped into the river, the slowly growing organization behind Centipede are picked off within days.) At the same time, he keeps a close watch on the Captain. Monitors all of his movements in case anyone tries to take out his mission first.

Quietly he catalogues all of the Captain’s habits. A run in the morning with Wilson. Hours at the library searching the news for any news on his alias. Furious sketching when he can’t sleep (and if he does, a minimum of three hours to four before the Captain is back up again.) Wilson routinely reminds the Captain to eat with a gentle expression that makes the soldier want to put a bullet through his head. The Captain looks haggard and it isn’t… it isn’t _right_.

A flicker, an image of Steve Rogers pre-serum, layers itself over the soldier’s view of the Captain and something in him seems to relax before he catches himself.

The Captain starts throwing his sketches away and the soldier steals them for himself. He traces the lines of lead and charcoal, the images of a woman with resemblance to the Captain (his mother, only living relative until Rogers was a teenager) and another woman in a military jacket (Carter, founder of SHIELD and the Captain’s beau and he wants to rip that page apart yet something makes him fold it up carefully and put it with the other sketches he stole.) There are rushed images of the avengers, of Tony Stark in a suit and in the armour. Of the Hulk and Doctor Banner. Of the rumoured gods Thor and Loki. Of the Widow and her Hawk. And cracked shields.

But it’s the images of Barnes that make him pause. No, not Barnes. The hair is too long and the baggy eyes he recognizes. These are sketches of _him._ The _soldier_ and he didn’t know that he looked so… vulnerable. So lost. So… human.

( _You are not a man,_ a German voice whispers in his head, _you are a weapon and you are our ghost and you will remain in the ice when we order you to…_ )

He wants to throw them away but he doesn’t. It’s not like the mirror. He doesn’t… he doesn’t feel rage when he sees himself like this. And there’s more on the page, a lightly penciled figure (as if he will fade if the soldier touches him with human hands) of a smaller and skinner Steve Rogers, holding out a tentative hand.

His breath hitches, as if he’s reached the climax of another tale and he wants to know the ending. Wants it as much as he had wanted to know what Barnes and the Captain were to each other.

The soldier steals a wallet and carries that sketch in protective glossy covering with him.

If he can’t find out what he is ( _a weapon, a ghost, nonexistent_ ) then he can at least have this story.

( _Lies,_ they say when he wakes from the ice, screaming out a name, the name that makes him feel calm. _There is no one like that here. You made it up. It’s not real.)_

It’s not real, he thinks, but it’s his and that is enough.

-

That night he dreams. He dreams of the small Steve Rogers giving him his hand and he takes it and they walk to a beach and when he wakes there is liquid streaming down his face and he… he doesn’t… he _didn’t know people could experience this._

No wonder people kill for it.

-

He starts to steal Rogers’s sketchbooks. He spends hours looking at each page before he goes to photocopy them and put the original sketches back into the bedroom that Rogers stays in. He even takes a day off of monitoring his mission so that he can liberate the old sketchbooks from the Smithsonian ( _he feels anger when he sees them in a glass case, frozen in time, where they don’t belong… he sees a thin figure and later a broader one cradling it carefully and that’s when he knows he’ll take it for himself_ —) Small details come to him as he tries to memorize those old drawings and as he continues his watch of Rogers.

Rogers likes to stop and help strangers (strangers that could knife him within three seconds, strangers that could take his money or beat him in an alley and the soldier simmers at the careless liberties his mission takes—) He holds bags for the elderly. He stops men from harassing women, even gets into a few fist fights and even when he wins, he offers a hand to help the loser and tells them to treat the ladies better or they’ll be sorry. If they don’t, Rogers reports them. Rogers rushes out into a storm to get his pregnant neighbor some medicine and the soldier fights back the urge to run after him (but the soldier wants to and it’s so addicting, to _want_ and he suddenly doesn’t care why he wants. He just… he just does.)

The Captain in the stories and the Rogers he observes are similar in small ways but he finds that he prefers the Rogers he watches. The Rogers with quiet smiles and witty jokes, with gentle sketches and kindness to all he meets. Not a man merely following orders but… but a…

 _A damn good human being,_ something supplies.

(It happens more often, him talking to the voice in his head. The scientists used to wipe him when he mentioned it. Like it was something wrong. But he doesn’t care anymore. He… he _likes_ the voice, though it can be irritating. And isn’t that something sensational for him? To _like_ something. He thinks he likes Rogers and the sketches but that goes… that goes beyond anything he can quantify, how do you quantify such—)

It occurs to him, then, that he hasn’t thought of killing Rogers since he started watching him.

-

But Rogers can’t ignore the world for long. It won’t let him and the soldier has an urge to shoot every politician, every terrorist and organization leader in the head so that they leave Rogers in peace to be kind and to sketch and to… to _be._ But the world is crying out for Captain America to return. It demands answers. It’s named SHIELD a terrorist organization and there are gifted individuals popping up all over the world, out of control, too much for each country to contain. They need a supersoldier. They need the Avengers.

Rogers joins up after a quiet conversation on the phone with Stark, after staring at the blank walls for a long time before he answers that he will come.

Of course, the soldier follows.

-

He hates the other avengers. They’re too loud. They crowd around Rogers and make him uncomfortable with questions about his ‘boyfriend’ (and when did that happen? When did Rogers move on to another romantic interest, let alone a male? What has he missed? Is it Wilson? Does he have to shoot him? And he finds that his finger is itching to pull the trigger.) They are not like Wilson, who knows when to push and when to joke.

Yet Rogers seems to tolerate them. Gives a long suffering sigh and carries on as unofficial team leader. He gravitates more towards Wilson and the Widow, closer to them because of what happened at the end of SHIELD. Even Barton seems to get along with him fine. Stark and Thor are the loud ones. Thor more agreeable than Stark. Banner is merely a suppressed vision of calm.

 _And these guys are ‘heroes’,_ the voice snorts in protest. _I can’t believe they’re gonna watch Stevie’s back._

They won’t be, the soldier thinks. He will.

-

It’s easy. Almost… fun. If that’s the word. He’s not sure anymore, if he ever was in the first place. But something seems to slide into place. A purpose. What he’s meant to do. He reacts to any danger to Rogers within a heartbeat, as if he once lived to pick off the shadows away from his… his mission. He stays out of sight and he knows the Widow suspects something but they never find him.

He’s a ghost, after all.

-

But then the Chitauri return and they are not connected as a hive mind anymore. They want revenge.

-

The soldier cannot find Steve. He can’t find him anywhere. Buildings are falling and Iron Man is above, blasting as many alien ships as he can. The Widow and the Hawk fight furiously side-by-side. The Hulk is destroying the mound of Chitauri that tackle him while Thor wields his lightning, firing it at any ships that come near.

But Steve is nowhere to be found. The soldier had been so caught up in battle. He had been sniping out those that were coming near the Widow and the Hawk, since Steve appeared to be safe for the moment but when he looked back…

There!

The soldier runs across the battlefield. Past corpses of human and aliens alike. He sees Steve defending two little boys from a group of Chitauri and so the soldier pulls out a pistol and shoots them all in the heart. But _shit,_ one of the Chitauri had its finger on the trigger of its phaser and a laser rushes out to hit the roof of the café the boys were hiding in and Steve, _stupid stupid stupid punk_ , pushes them out of the way and then—

The soldier screams, jumping into the falling rubble and then it’s dark.

-

As soon as he wakes, he thinks with a rushing pulse, _Steve_ , before he gets up and nearly hits his head on one of the steel bars that saved him from being squashed. He scans the area and notes that he’s stuck in a pocket of rubble, from when the building fell on top of him and there, at the bottom of the little cave of chairs and steel bars is—

“Steve!” he rushes over and takes his pulse. Steve is half buried in rubble from the torso down and if the soldier tries to pull him out then the structure might collapse entirely on them both and then Steve and his mission will be gone and the soldier will have _nothing_ —

His mission groans, blinking slowly at the soldier with wonder in his eyes (and for a moment, the soldier sees a smaller Steve curled up in blankets, coughing from sickness but still smiling at Barnes as if he’s the most wonderful thing in the world and he doesn’t deserve that—)

“…Bucky…” he breathes.

“M’not him,” the soldier replies.

“Oh,” Steve blinks slowly, “but you look like him. M’sorry. I thought…” he frowns, “Where am I?”

“Buried. You were an idiot and you saved two children but didn’t save yourself.”

“Oh. Alright then,” Steve nods, his head lulling down as if he’s going to drift off.

“No!” the soldier slaps him, “You are _not_ allowed to sleep, Steve. You are _not_ allowed to leave me. You’re—” _mine,_ he wants to say. But Steve belongs to Barnes and Barnes belongs to the dead and so the soldier has no one.

To his surprise, Steve starts laughing until he coughs (the idiot.) “Are you sure you’re not Bucky?” he says, a twinkle there that the soldier has only seen in the newsreels, when Steve was looking at Barnes.

“Yes,” he says. Too bitterly. Too harshly. They never really programmed him well for espionage. He’s slipping. He was just designed to kill. “I am the Winter Soldier.”

He waits for a flinch. For disappointment. For _something._ But Steve still looks at him like… like that.

“You should be _afraid_ of me,” he presses, not knowing why. Something is shaking. Oh, it’s him. His arms. His fingers. Why? But he keeps going, “I’ve killed more than you know. I’ve started wars for them. I’ve killed innocents for them. I’m a ghost. You should be afraid.”

“…Never believed in ghost stories…” Steve slurs. “Just believed in you.”

 _Idiot._ Why can’t he just _understand?!_ “I’m not _him!_ ” he finds himself shouting and dust falls around both of them. “You see him in me but I am not. That. Man. Anymore!”

“…I know…” Steve breathes quietly, “…you’re a new Bucky… and that’s okay… I like you anyways…”

And the soldier is… the soldier is…

His hand is hovering over Steve’s chest. One by Steve’s wrist. The other by his neck.

“…Why?! I don’t… I don’t understand…”

“…Did you like my sketches…?” Steve’s eyes droop shut again, “…I hoped… you might…”

“That I might? That I might what?”

“…Might want to… be friends… even though I’m like this… and you… you’re like this too. I thought… maybe we could be… broken together. Wouldn’t be bad.”

The soldier finds himself shaking uncontrollably and his hands have found their way to Steve’s. He cradling Steve against his chest.

“Can’t. Shouldn’t. It’s not… not safe.” _For you,_ he realizes. _I am not safe for you._ He is a ghost and there is nothing of Barnes left yet Steve says he likes the ghost too and—

“Don’t care,” Steve laughs harshly again. “Was always just us two. That’s how it was.”

“Don’t close your eyes,” he barks. “Stay awake.”

“See? Still a bit of you… more bossy… still bossy…”

“Keep talking Steve,” he says and he promises that he won’t leave this time. No one will take this away from him again. No one. Just _let him live_ (and he sees, again, a younger Barnes praying the same thing when little Steve was on the verge of death with the flu.) “Tell me… tell me a story. Tell me what I’m supposed to be.”

“You’re… you’re my Bucky… you… you already _are_.”

And that’s how the soldier spends the rest of that hour. Holding Steve against his chest. Babbling in German, Russian and English. Telling him to stay. Please, just stay.

-

 _Once,_ Steve tries to tell him, _there were two soldiers… but that’s what everyone else called them. Soldiers. Heroes. But they were just two boys. And they were best friends._

 _Is that how it ends?_ the soldier asks.

 _…I don’t know,_ Steve admits, _everyone keeps putting them on ice. Keeps telling them to fight… I’m tired, Bucky._

_Then I’ll fight for you._

_No, Buck… you’re tired too._

It’s quiet.

 _We should rest,_ Steve finally drifts off.

 _Together,_ says the soldier, closing his eyes as well.

-

The avengers find them curled up together, barely breathing, unafraid.

**Author's Note:**

> And then Steve had a very overprotective boyfriend following him around and they both have their issues and PTSD but at least they’re together. And when the soldier doesn’t know who he is, when Steve doesn’t know where he is, when they want to yell at the world around them… they tell each other stories. And it feels a little better. Sequel in the works.


End file.
